Kate Winslet took a stand against photoshopping years before Mare of Easttown

Kate Winslet won praise this week for taking a principled stand about a TV sex scene. It’s a battle she’s been waging for nearly 20 years.

One story stood out among the flurry of coverage about gripping whodunit miniseries Mare of Easttown this week.

The crime drama, now streaming on Binge, stars 45-year-old Kate Winslet as Mare Sheehan, a detective sergeant who puts her work and her family first. Her diet consists of beer and hoagies, eaten on the fly. She rarely wears make-up and hasn’t been to a hairdresser in months.

It’s a decidedly unglamorous role, with no room for vanity – and Winslet insisted that extended to her character’s one sex scene with co-star Guy Pearce.

When director Craig Zobel assured her he would cut out a “bulgy bit of belly” visible in the scene, Winslet objected, saying “Don’t you dare!”

Speaking to The New York Times, Winslet also revealed she sent the show’s promotional poster back twice, demanding that heavy photoshopping on her face be removed.

“They were like, ‘Kate, really, you can’t,’ and I’m like, ‘Guys, I know how many lines I have by the sides of my eye, please put them all back,’” she said.

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Kate Winslet in Mare of Easttown. Picture: HBO/Binge

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Winslet won praise for her stance this week – and it’s a battle she’s been waging for years.

Back in 2003, when she was 27, Winslet spoke up about a stunning GQ magazine cover shoot she’d posed for.

The picture is gorgeous – Winslet, smouldering and blonde, in a tight black corset and stockings. But the curvy, 169cm star looks more like a towering supermodel with long, slender legs.

Kate Winslet on the cover of the February 2003 issue of GQ magazine.

Controversy erupted, with GQ’s editor Dylan Jones saying Winslet had approved the photos, which had been “digitally altered”. Winslet’s agent refuted that claim, saying they had approved the original photos, which were then digitally altered.

Leave it to Winslet to settle the matter.

“I do not look like that, and more importantly, I don’t have a desire to look like that,” she told the BBC shortly after the cover was released. “I actually have a Polaroid that the photographer gave me on the day of the shoot … I can tell you they’ve reduced the size of my legs by about a third. For my money it looks pretty good the way it was taken.”

RELATED: Why Guy Pearce caused big trouble for Mare of Easttown

Winslet in 2003, the year of the controversial GQ cover.

Those with long memories will recall just what a tabloid issue Winslet’s quote-unquote ‘size’ was after the 1997 smash Titanic catapulted her from British period drama fixture to global movie star.

“It was almost laughable how shocking, how critical, how straight-up cruel tabloid journalists were to me,” she told the Guardian earlier this year.

“They would comment on my size, they’d estimate what I weighed, they’d print the supposed diet I was on. It was critical and horrible and so upsetting to read.

“In my 20s, people would talk about my weight a lot. And I would be called to comment on my physical self. Well, then I got this label of being ballsy and outspoken.

“No, I was just defending myself.”

Originally published as Kate Winslet took a stand against photoshopping years before Mare of Easttown